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Re: Chevy Volt

Originally Posted by Bobber

Wonder where the Nissan Leaf will be priced?

$32,780 total, $25,280 net after the tax breaks. I would be really interested to see how much more energy people will use charging the battery and what the cost will be there. It will be a little while before they get in my price range but I'd love to get a totally electric car.

Re: Chevy Volt

Originally Posted by BryceC

$32,780 total, $25,280 net after the tax breaks. I would be really interested to see how much more energy people will use charging the battery and what the cost will be there. It will be a little while before they get in my price range but I'd love to get a totally electric car.

This is tough to justify. Even after the tax savings you're still paying a $10K premium for the fuel savings. I'm making the assumption that the leaf won't be better than a $15K car like the Versa.

It sounds like Nissan will actually break even on these cars. The Volt will lose money.

Re: Chevy Volt

Is there any analysis on savings on maintenance? Obviously these still have a combustable engine with all the maintenance that goes with. So it probably doesn't matter with the Volt or Leaf.

But I recall in the documentary on the EV1 that a purely electric car has a small fraction of the upkeep costs. Something to consider when questioning the premium over a similar gas vehicle.

The Leaf is 100% electric so I would think maintenance would be a lot lower. I think the big question mark is the batteries and resale. Are you going to want to buy an electric vehicle with 60K miles? How many miles will you get out of the batteries? What loss of performance can you expect? Just a lot of questions.

I think the one saving grace has been the Toyota Prius. As much as I hate them they have been very reliable so the resale has been VERY good.

Re: Chevy Volt

I guess this would be useful for in-town commuters, but for a family car it doesn't seem worth it. If you drive over 40 miles, the gasoline engine kicks in at 80 HP! My Corolla has around 110 HP and I'm not sure that it would be drivable without the manual transmission to work the RPM's. I could not imagine the drag with passengers and the extra weight of batteries. I'll stick to my 35-38 mpg and wait until someone (other than Tesla) can figure out electric vehicles.

Re: Chevy Volt

Its a gasoline generator that charges the battories so the car's performance will be the same as the first 40 miles. Or at least thats my understanding.

Originally Posted by Clonehomer

I guess this would be useful for in-town commuters, but for a family car it doesn't seem worth it. If you drive over 40 miles, the gasoline engine kicks in at 80 HP! My Corolla has around 110 HP and I'm not sure that it would be drivable without the manual transmission to work the RPM's. I could not imagine the drag with passengers and the extra weight of batteries. I'll stick to my 35-38 mpg and wait until someone (other than Tesla) can figure out electric vehicles.

Re: Chevy Volt

Originally Posted by dmclone

The Leaf is 100% electric so I would think maintenance would be a lot lower. I think the big question mark is the batteries and resale. Are you going to want to buy an electric vehicle with 60K miles? How many miles will you get out of the batteries? What loss of performance can you expect? Just a lot of questions.

I think the one saving grace has been the Toyota Prius. As much as I hate them they have been very reliable so the resale has been VERY good.

I thought the leaf was. But the article I just read stated they figured it's mileage at 300+/gal. Which I couldn't really figure...

Batteries are definitely the question mark with most all these vehicles. And I suspect that it was intentionally omitted in that doc (or I'm just not remembering - been a while).

We briefly looked at the Prius a couple years ago. I really don't see the knock on them. I like having a nice car - but don't get into styles or sportiness at all. But when we looked at the Prius - it was neat little car.

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